Philosoraptor

Yeah... they used to do that. It's just not a good idea TBH. It's bad enough for some people to see that 100 people viewed their meem that they thought was hilarious and 1 person liked it. It would be worse if they saw 30 people disliked it... but the downvote is still useful for their algorithms or whatever so they keep it.

They stopped circa 2015 due to unpopularity.

so then what's the point of having it there anymore?

This is so imgflip can claim that your submission got downvoted back into submitted status without having to prove it.

I guess they just don't want to hurt the self-esteem of users any further than it already is.

Yeah why Is that?